scholarly journals Health vs. hedonism: public communication of nutrition science

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (03) ◽  
pp. C03
Author(s):  
Catherine Lockley

Do differences in narrative approach; hedonic language vs. scientific language, influence public perception and opinion of Nutrition and food consumption? Our study investigated this question using qualitative research via Focus Group (FG). The stimulus films and subsequent meals exemplified hedonic language and biomedical language respectively. The FG was chosen to elucidate alternative narrative tools for further research and public health communication. Five sessions were held over 4 weeks with 8–10 non-repeating participants at each session. Film clips were viewed in a dining room environment and food served in buffet style after viewing. 47 people participated in the focus groups (15 males, and 32 females [ages 18–78]). Recruitment was by social media, local news outlets, word of mouth, and printed material and followed up via email. Study eligibility included self-identifying as primary food provider/cook, being over eighteen years old, and providing informed consent. Qualitative content analysis and grounded theory was used for coding and analysis. Interpretive reading of the transcript identified manifest and latent content before a coding frame was arrived at based on the frequency of relevant categories. Cross-coding was undertaken and patterns identified according to our primary research question. Communication disparities suggested by previous research were confirmed in our findings with participants emphasizing that the personal impact of hedonic and psychosocial narrative on their personal food experience held greater weight than the ‘health’ narrative alone. We conclude that scientific nutrition communication paradigms are less effective than emotional narrative that engages passion, memory and deep feeling. The findings support a move towards nutrition communication strategies that incorporate wider human emotional experience through gastronomic narratives.

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley D. Curtin ◽  
Christina C. Loitz ◽  
Nancy Spencer-Cavaliere ◽  
Ernest Nene Khalema

Immigrants to Canada are less likely to be physically active compared with non-immigrants, and the interrelations between personal and environmental factors that influence physical activity for immigrants are largely unexplored. The goal of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand how the experience of being new to Canada impacts opportunities and participation in physical activity. Two focus group interviews with immigrants to Canada were conducted. The first group ( n=7) included multicultural health brokers. The second group ( n=14) included English as a second language students. Qualitative content analysis was used to determine three themes consistent with the research question: transition to Canadian life, commitments and priorities, and accessibility. Discussion was framed using a social ecological model. Implications for practice and policy are suggested including enhanced community engagement, and organizational modifications. Overall, the development and implementation of physical activity policies and practices for newcomers to Canada should be centered on newcomers’ perspectives and experiences.


1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-24
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Rapelje

After two years of design research, the near-term goal of the Senior Citizens Department, Regional Niagara, was to build innovative homes to address the issues and programs the studies revealed. The long-term objective was to build homes that would start to change the public perception of long-term care facilities. Featuringa “Town Square”, the home comprises five houses of 20 beds, each providing a different level of care. Corridors are a unique design, and each house has its own dining room facilities and activity room. A central Day Care lounge features dining room facilities for family and friends. The Department hopes the overall design will help to break down the stereotype image of long-term care design, an d provide a suitable environment for the mentally and physically frail, as well as ambulatory residents.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Paquin Morel

Background/context In recent years, opposition to accountability policies and associated testing has manifested in widespread boycotts of annual tests—mobilized as the “opt-out movement.” A central challenge facing any movement is the need to recruit and mobilize participants. Key to this process is framing—a discursive tactic in which activists present social issues as problems that require collective action to solve. Such framing often relies on compatible political and ideological commitments among activists and potential recruits. Yet the opt-out movement has successfully mobilized widespread boycotts in diverse communities. How have participants in the movement framed issues relating to testing and accountability? Purpose/objective/research question/focus of study I explore the discursive tactics of participants in the opt-out movement by analyzing how they frame issues related to testing and accountability over time. I ask two research questions: (1) What frames did participants in opt-out-aligned social media groups use to convince others that standardized accountability tests are a problem and build support for the movement? (2) To what extent and how did the deployment of frames change over time? Research design I conducted a mixed-methods study combining qualitative content analysis to identify frames and computational analysis to describe their co-deployment over time. Data collection and analysis I compiled a text corpus of posts to opt-out-aligned social media pages from 2010–2014. I analyzed posts using open coding to identify frames used by participants in online communities. Frames were categorized by their orientation—the general way in which they framed the problem of testing and accountability. I then analyzed the co-deployment of frames using network analysis and hierarchical clustering. Conclusions/recommendations The longitudinal analysis of frames reveals key differences in the frames used by participants. While more politically oriented frames—those characterizing testing as a social issue affecting the public schools at large—were common in early stages of the movement, less overtly political frames—those characterizing testing as an individual issue affecting children and local schools or a technical issue—became more prominent over time. Over time, socially oriented frames became decoupled from other frames, showing independent patterns of deployment. This suggests that the movement may have benefited from de-emphasizing politically oriented frames, but that it lacked an overarching shared narrative, which has the potential to limit how it might affect accountability policies and testing.


ZDM ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frode Rønning

AbstractThis paper is based on data from two teaching sequences in primary school that are designed using principles from the theory of didactical situations (TDS). The following research question is addressed: “What opportunities can a teaching design based on TDS give a teacher to gain insight into pupils’ language use, and to use this insight to establish shared, and mathematically acceptable, knowledge in a group of primary school pupils?” Empirical data from one teaching sequence on geometrical shapes and another teaching sequence on combinatorial problems are used to answer this question. The research shows that a sharp focus on well-defined learning goals does not limit the pupils’ possibilities in expressing their thoughts and ideas in their own language. The research also shows that despite clear learning goals, the teacher has rich opportunities to build on pupils’ language to connect everyday and scientific language for the purpose of developing a mathematically accepted discourse.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e24152-e24152
Author(s):  
Sam Brondfield ◽  
Cynthia Perlis

e24152 Background: Art therapy can improve quality of life (QOL) and symptoms in patients with cancer. However, prior studies have focused on time-limited interventions. At the University of California, San Francisco, the Art for Recovery Open Art Studio (OAS) allows patients with cancer to create art and discuss experiences as a group with an art therapist (C.P.) each week. Most patients participate weekly. Our research question was: What is the value of the OAS that keeps patients coming back? Methods: In April 2019, C.P. identified all 23 patients who had attended the OAS over the past three months. We excluded one due to cognitive impairment. We designed a one-time email survey with closed- and open-ended questions. We chose a survey rather than interviews to minimize burden to patients, minimize social desirability bias, and maximize time for reflection before responding. We drew upon S.B.’s formal training in survey design and C.P.’s decades of experience with the OAS for content validity. We conducted cognitive interviews with two patients for response process validity which did not result in changes. We reported closed-ended responses using descriptive statistics. We used a paired t-test to compare, retrospectively, mean QOL before attending the OAS to mean present QOL, on a five-point scale (poor to excellent). We felt a longer QOL survey could burden symptomatic patients. S.B. and C.P. independently coded open-ended responses and aligned codes through discussion. Results: Eighteen of 22 patients (82%) responded. Mean age was 54 (range 37-76). Mean duration of attendance was four years (range 10 months to 11 years), and median frequency was three times per month. All respondents found the OAS “very helpful,” and 17 of 18 (94%) felt the friendships from the OAS were “very valuable” (top of four-point scale). Mean QOL improved from 2.7 to 4.2 (p < 0.001). Coding revealed themes of self-reflection, emotional experience, artistic engagement, togetherness, and familiar surroundings as OAS benefits. Conclusions: Our study focuses on OAS elements that keep patients with cancer coming back for years. While our results align with prior studies showing improved QOL, our study additionally reveals the multifaceted benefits of experiencing the OAS longitudinally. Study limitations include small sample size, incomplete validity evidence for the survey, and social desirability bias in survey responses. Our study supports further exploration of longitudinal OAS experiences, which may provide benefits such as friendship and community that briefer art therapy interventions may lack.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
Arianna Soldati ◽  
Sam Illingworth

Abstract. In this study we investigate what poetry written about volcanoes from the 1800s to the present day reveals about the relationship between volcanoes and the societies and times represented by poets who wrote about them, including how it evolved over that time frame. In order to address this research question, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of a selection of 34 English-language poems written about human–volcano interactions. Firstly, we identified the overall connotation of each poem. Then, we recognised specific emerging themes and grouped them in categories. Additionally, we performed a quantitative analysis of the frequency with which each category occurs throughout the decades of the dataset. This analysis reveals that a spiritual element is often present in poetry about volcanoes, transcending both the creative and destructive power that they exert. Furthermore, the human–volcano relationship is especially centred around the sense of identity that volcanoes provide to humans, which may follow from both positive and negative events. These results highlight the suitability of poetry as a means to explore the human perception of geologic phenomena. Additionally, our findings may be relevant to the definition of culturally appropriate communication strategies with communities living near active volcanoes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 110-120
Author(s):  
Roland Tusch

With the Railway Age, the perception of the landscape has changed. In Austria, the world’s first high mountain railway was built in the middle of the 19th century. It crosses the Alps at one of their eastern foothills, the Semmering. The central subject of this study is the landscape that was completely transformed by the construction of the Semmering Railway between 1852 and 1873. How was the Semmering perceived before it was discovered by the Viennese society as a region of summer resort? How were the massive changes in the Alpine landscape caused by the construction of the railway portrayed in the medium of contemporary travel guides?The sources investigated cover the period from the construction of the Semmering Railway to the discovery of the region as a summer resort. Starting with the first travel guides to the construction site and ending with the travel guides to the completed railway, seven main sources were analysed. As a starting point for the qualitative content analysis, a system of categories was developed as a search grid to filter the relevant aspects for answering the research question. The analysis follows the process of coding, paraphrasing and generalizing, and clearly reveals different levels of perception. The landscape in which the railway was built was described in extremely positive, poetic formulations. The negatively judging descriptions are particularly remarkable in the context of the travel guides, as they can be read as a critical reflection of the changed situation. Instead of regretting the destruction of nature, the victory of man or technology over nature was celebrated. From the comparison of the travel guides to the construction site and those to the completed railway, the progress of the construction work is clearly readable. The magnificence of the construction project was beyond question from the very beginning. The travel guides allow one to comprehend this, at the time rather young, transformation of the landscape; they open up a differentiated view of the landscape. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Denis Francesconi ◽  
Barbara Gross ◽  
Evi Agostini

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the limits of current social and educational structures. In most countries, COVID-19 has compromised the wellbeing of students, but also of their families and teachers. During the first wave of the pandemic, school systems all over the world had to respond quickly and appropriately to the systemic shock it represented, and countries put a variety of different policy measures in place to tackle its extensive impact. The theoretical framework adopted in this paper is a critical perspective and the policy framework is the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); it provides a qualitative analysis of selected educational policies deployed by Italy and Austria to support the wellbeing of school pupils. The two countries deployed different education governance and emergency management strategies, in particular during the first wave of the pandemic. We applied our theoretical and policy frameworks to qualitative content analysis of educational policy documents from February to the end of August 2020, aiming to evaluate the responses to crisis of different education systems and potentially to support their improvement. The overall research question was: How did educational policies in Italy and Austria support students' wellbeing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic? The results confirm that the Italian and Austrian systems had different strategies to support wellbeing and put different initiatives in place. However, educational policies in both countries, and especially Italy, had a stronger focus on the physical wellbeing of individual students during the period under study, and tended to neglect social wellbeing. The paper concludes by reflecting on the opportunities presented by this emergency for school systems to position wellbeing (in the broader sense of eudaimonic wellbeing) at the centre of educational policy


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Soldati ◽  
Sam Illingworth

Abstract. In this study we investigate what poetry written about volcanoes from 1800 to the present day reveals about the relationship between humanity and volcanoes, including how it evolved over that time frame. In order to address this research question, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of a selection of 34 English-language poems written about the human-volcano interactions. Firstly, we identified the overall connotation of each poem. Then, we recognized specific emerging themes and grouped them in categories. Additionally, we performed a quantitative analysis of the frequency with which each category occurs throughout the decades of the dataset. This analysis reveals that a spiritual element is often present in poetry about volcanoes, transcending both the creative and destructive power that they exert. Furthermore, the human-volcano relationship is especially centred around the sense of identity that volcanoes provide to humans, which may follow from both positive and negative events. These results highlight the suitability of poetry as a means to explore the human perception of geologic phenomena. Additionally, our findings may be relevant to the definition of culturally appropriate communication strategies with communities living nearby active volcanoes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Joel A. Jueckstock

Relational spirituality has been proposed as a theoretical model of spirituality. Until now, relational spirituality has not been considered in contemporary grief research. Through deductive qualitative content analysis, this research explores the primary research question, How does individuals’ relational spirituality impact their grief response? Relational spirituality, described in light of current research, and the paradigm of attachment to God are employed to explicate specific relational qualities. Grief is understood in light of Bonanno’s work, which is altering the norms of grief constructs by asserting there are three common responses to loss: chronic grief, recovery, and resilience. Deductive analysis demonstrates secure attachments to God and grief responses characterized by recovery and resilience are related. This analysis also draws attention to how individuals make meaning in light of their relational spirituality.


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